One third of all global ad spend growth will be driven by paid search and social media spend within the next two years, according to the latest report by Publicis-owned industry forecaster Zenith.

Annual global ad spend is on track to hit $581bn (£442bn) by the end of 2018, while Zenith raised its predictions for global ad spend growth from 4.1% to 4.5% until 2020, 67% of which will come from investments in paid search and social media ads.

Google has made no secret of efforts to bridge the world of online marketing and highstreet sales. It has the tech and dominance in droves, and bricks-and-mortar sales still account for over 80% of commerce - you can’t knock the logic.

In recent tweaks to its Shopping ads, the search giant even said it was making it possible for advertisers to...

These evolutions keep us on our toes and, for savvy marketers, present an opportunity to ensure their clients always have the edge over their competitors. Recently, the biggest disruptor to the industry has almost certainly been the advent of voice and visual search – changing SEO forever.

Some two decades after launching, Google’s AdWords and DoubleClick brands are about to be sunsetted and rolled in under one of three simple banners.

The search engine says its aim is to streamline its ad products, better representing the solutions it offers and intentions for growth, as well as making it easier for brands to select the tools needed for campaigns.

Google Adwords will become Google Ads

Having launched in 2000 allowing local businesses to buy text ads within its SERPs (search engine...

The voice technology revolution is not just occurring within the home. Hotels, restaurants and the wider hospitality industry are rapidly adopting new tools and solutions to keep pace with the demands of modern consumers.

The Best Western hotel chain, for instance, is expanding its partnership with Watson Ads on a series of artificial intelligence-powered interactive ad units that...

We’ve already given you five reasons why Bing shouldn’t be ignored for search marketing, and its latest integration with LiveRamp provides a sixth.

The underappreciated Microsoft search engine, which actually owns close to a fifth of the global search market, has introduced the data onboarder’s identity resolution provider IdentityLink. And while that may not mean much, in simple terms it...

Google has announced a string of new updates to its Google Shopping platform, aimed at attracting online customers to retailer’s offline ‘brick and mortar’ stalls.

Announced at Search Marketing Expo Advanced (SMX Advanced) yesterday (June 12), the search giant claims despite the massive growth of e-commerce driven by the likes of Amazon, when customers want an item right away, 80% will head to the high...

It’s an important objective imposed on marketers every single year – how best to squeeze every drop out of the annual budget.

Even industry professionals who, on paper, have more cash to splash, are still pressed to make their spend go further. And then there are those less fortunate of course, who have their budgets cut whilst the targets remain as competitive as ever.

So, whichever scenario you find yourself in, if you’re faced with a ‘limited budget’, what should the focus be...

New figures from Kantar Media’s AdGooroo platform show that an elite group of consumer brands dominated the click share in UK paid search advertising in the 2017 holiday season.

The search marketing intelligence platform analysed google Desktop and mobile text ad activity on 990 top retail keywords from 1 November to 11 December. Among the most popular keywords for the period were ‘engagement rings’, ‘fitbit’, ‘washing machines’, ‘xbox one’ and...

Its official – the retail Christmas trading period has arrived, with under 100 days until the big day. In the UK, the trading period generally runs from October to January, and this won’t change any time soon.

But with such a limited key shopping timeframe, many brands are looking to challenge the way the fashion industry works throughout the rest of the year – why focus only on selling cold, wintery clothes when the weather may change imminently?

Paid search, or pay per click (PPC), often used in conjunction with SEO, remains an essential marketing element for many businesses, most notably those that want an online presence.

But we are still seeing businesses not effectively implementing PPC campaigns successfully. One of the biggest areas that businesses are failing to address is a low AdWords quality score. In short, if you’re trying to master PPC, you need to understand quality score.

When Forrest Gump’s mother famously told him that “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get,” she just as easily could have been talking about digital ad placements purchased programmatically.

Technology has immersed itself into all aspects of our lives meaning our digital footprint paints a more detailed picture than ever before.

Brands today have a wealth of different ways they can engage using this understanding but the key to unlocking future realms of engagement boils down to translating the intelligence into meaningful actions, using this to create new world touch points driven by technology.

Marketers continue to lead companies through this digital transformation.

When Theresa May called for a snap general election to be held on Thursday 8th June 2017, the major UK political parties were left with little time to prepare and implement their campaign strategies.

Whilst each party presented very different manifestos to how they would govern the UK, one thing the two major political parties, Labour and The Conservatives did agree on was to invest in search marketing, competing to get their adverts positioned at the top of search engine results pages (SERP).

Different...

Digital ad spend grew at the fastest rate for seven years with UK digital ad spend up 16.4% to more than £8.6 billion, according to the latest Internet Advertising Bureau UK Digital Adspend report, conducted by PwC.

The rise is the highest since a 17.1% rise in 2008 and follows a 12% increase in the number of internet-enabled devices in each household. The report claims this now stands to 8.3 per household with connected TVs seeing the biggest rise in ownership at 27%. Smartphones...

Social advertising spend is growing rapidly, according to a new report which shows that marketers spent 86% more year on year in the first quarter of 2016. The growth was driven particularly by a 122% rise in mobile ad spend.

An increase in spend on Instagram ads and Facebook Dynamic Product Ads also helped to drive the increase – a trend that goes against the normal seasonal ad buying patterns.